


comfort (v.)

by CinderScoria



Series: comfort is a noun [2]
Category: Video Blogging RPF, escape the night - Fandom
Genre: 'gosh Jas you got this out fast', Gen, I shouldn't be as delighted as I was by that episode I apologize I am a legit sadist, Poor Nikita, anyway Matt is a good noodle? I'll fight every last one of you, anyway here have part two of Comfort bc y'all know I gotta represent my boy Matt returning the favor, ashldfljfewl why do I keep forgetting the spoilers tag, hoo boy, my poor kids, spoilers up to s3e9, this episode was A Lot wasn't it, this is shorter than Comfort is a Noun I am so sorry lmfao, yeah it's almost like I had most of this already typed up bc I knew it was gonna be Manny el oh el
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 04:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15622479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinderScoria/pseuds/CinderScoria
Summary: com·fort(verb.)1. ease the grief or distress of; console.





	comfort (v.)

**Author's Note:**

> so here's what I've noticed:
> 
> of our Slytherin finalists, Nikita is the head. She pushes the group to keep moving, not to dwell on choices they've made or the friends they've lost, to consistently move to the next artifact so they can get out of here. Matt, however, is the heart. He supports, he comforts, he protects, and he is just all-around a more emotionally driven person. More often than not, logic is what's needed to make decisions and keep going. However, anyone who's ever been in dialectical behavioral therapy will tell you that being emotion-minded is just as important as being logic-minded. You need both to survive.
> 
> I wrote these one-shots with this in mind, because I've been emotional when I needed to be logical, and I've been logical when I needed to be emotional. I think it's important to showcase both of these dialectics, since they're portrayed so well in the show. Matt and Nikita are two fascinating sides of the same coin. Their relationship is worth exploring.
> 
> Additionally, I love Matthew, we all know this, and I wanted to reiterate that he had every right to be angry or distrustful towards Nikita and the most vindictive he got was eating popcorn while watching their challenge. He's a Good Boy and deserves love ok.

“Back to the lounge, back to the lounge!”

Nikita hears the words, but she doesn’t register them. She doesn’t even know which one of her friends had said them. All she knows is she’s freezing, and she lost an earring, and her hands are warm because the gun was warm, and  _ oh my god, Manny— _

They’re through the doors and to the couch in no time. It’s too bright. There are too many colors swirling around in her vision.  _ Imma need the world to stop for a second, _ she thinks dizzily. Hands guide her to sit. Joey is up in front of them, pacing, running his hands through his blonde hair, so it must be Matt next to her. Must be Matt, because it can’t be Manny, because she shot him. She shot him. She shot him. She—

Hands on her  _ face. _ Cold hands. Nikita gasps, jerking away, but Matt holds her face steady, locking onto her eyes. “Nikita, you with us?” he asks. His glasses are off. She’s never noticed before that his eyes are actually brown.

“Matt, we don’t have time—”

“We have to  _ make time,” _ Matt snaps back, silencing Joey’s rising hysteria. “We’re gonna need Nikita and she’s not okay right now.”

He turns his attention back to her and softens, both in grip and voice. “Hey,” he says, swiping a thumb across her cheek. Oh, that’s a tear he’s wiping away. And another one, right there. Matt ignores them, only looking at her. “Nikita, you gotta talk to me.”

Her mouth opens, but nothing but wheezing comes out. Oh, she can’t breathe. Why can’t she breathe? She’s sucking in lungfuls of air but nothing is registering, her chest is tight, she’s ruining her makeup but none of that matters because  _ Manny is dead and I shot him, what kind of horrible bitch shoots their best friend, he didn’t think I was gonna shoot him and I did— _

“No, no, we’re not gonna do that,” Matt soothes as her breaths pick up. “You did what you had to do. Manny knows that.”

“Does he?” It’s the first thing she can successfully say, and with the words come the sobs, ripped out from the depths of her chest, somewhere buried and hidden and never supposed to see the light of day. “Does he know that? Does that make it okay? I shot the only person I cared about in this entire goddamn nightmare, I shot him to save myself, and that’s supposed to be  _ okay?” _

Her words rise to a screaming pitch, trying to get him to hear her, to understand. She doesn’t understand herself, to be completely honest. All she knows is the fear on his face before she took it away with a bullet, with six bullets. _ I’ll be your number one with a bullet. _ The lyric pops into her head and she laughs at it, irrationally, because she can’t wrap her head around anything else at the moment.

“Oh, honey,” is all she hears from Matt, before he pulls her into a hug.

Matt’s a hugger, she’s noticed over the hours they’ve been here, pulling anyone who’s willing into one at any given point in time. Even the rather intimate one he’d given her when he was brought back from the dead told her that he didn’t hate her like she’d previously thought. She’d wondered what it was like to get a full one from him, and now she knows: it’s an odd sense of peace when everything else is chaotic and loud. Matt holds her tight, ignoring the fact that she has blood on her hands, that she could snap his neck right now if she wanted to, leave him lying on the floor like Mortimer.  _ And Calliope, oh my god, they’re all dead, they’re all dead and we’re alone now. _

Matt rocks her back and forth. Nikita sees Joey over his shoulder, pacing, making sure the doors are locked and very much not looking at them. Good, the fewer witnesses to this breakdown the better. Nikita doesn’t  _ feel, _ it’s not her thing, she grew up stone cold because people can prey on your emotions, turn them against you, any sign of weakness could be exploited and her mama didn’t raise no weakling. She learned from an early age to shut herself off, and it worked well, up until it didn’t.

And it’s crumbling all around her now, and she can’t get a grip because she can’t stop crying, and she still can’t breathe, but Matt is rubbing circles in her back and none of it is uncomfortable. “Try to square breathe,” he whispers in her ear, and she nods against his chest, focusing on that. A task to follow, a way to stop all this  _ feeling _ shit. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. It’s what she’d told Matt to do not even an hour ago. Him returning the favor now isn’t lost on her. She breathes, and notices that he’s humming something in her ear. He’s a good singer. She breathes, and her panic ebbs, leaving her drained and so, so incredibly sad.

“Matt,” she says when she can talk again, “I’m sorry.”

His humming stops and he pulls back, observing her face. It’s probably a goddamn mess at this point, but she’s too tired to care. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I’m sorry I didn’t care about Safiya. I’m sorry I said she deserved to die. I’m sorry I said it should be you next. I just—”

“You were only concerned about yourself and Manny,” Matt finishes gently. “Believe me, I get it.”

“You didn’t do that with Ro,” she argues.

“I didn't have to.” Matt purses his lips. “Manny was a strong contender. He could've won.”

She knows what he isn't saying. He shrugs. “I had some time to get used to the thought that Ro wouldn't make it out.”

His voice cracks on her name, but she doesn't point it out. She sits up, suddenly exhausted. “I killed him,” she whispers, rubbing at her arms, face flushed but still so utterly cold. “Not indirectly, not as a result of winning. I shot him in the chest.”

“You did,” Matt agrees, and she flinches. He kneels in front of her with his earnest brown eyes. “And we will get through that together, I promise you, we’re not going to leave you to deal with this on your own. But Manny would want you to make it out of here alive, and that’s what we’re going to do. Okay?”

He’s not asking if she’s okay, or saying that any of this is okay, and she appreciates that. She looks up to see Joey gazing back at her in quiet determination. He knows something. They haven’t lost yet.

Nikita takes a breath. She finds Matt’s hand and squeezes it. Then she stands, trembling, but in control now. She shoves the image of Manny’s wide, betrayed eyes into a box and locks it deep in her heart, where it can’t hurt her. “What do we do?”

Joey looks at Matt, and Matt looks at Nikita. The Savant sets his jaw, blue eyes blazing. “We save them all.”

 


End file.
